The  League  of  Nations 
in  History 

BY 

PROFESSOR  A.  F.  POLLARD 


OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON     EDINBURGH     GLASGOW     NEW  YORK 

TORONTO  MELBOURNE  CAPETOWN  BOMBAY 

HUMPHREY  MILFORD 

1918 

Threepence  Net 


The  Leaue  of  Nations 


BY 

PROFESSOR  A.  F.  POLLARD 


OXFORD   UNIVERSITY   PRESS 

LONDON     EDINBURGH     GLASGOW     NEW  YORK 

TORONTO  MELBOURNE  CAPETOWN  BOMBAY 

HUMPHREY  MILFORD 

1918 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNI 
SANTA  BARBARA 


THE  LEAGUE   OF  NATIONS  IN 
HISTOEY 

npHERE  has  probably  never  been  a  time  in  human 
-*-  history  in  which  verbal  homage  has  not  been 
paid  to  the  blessings  of  peace ;  and  no  conqueror  has 
been  so  warlike  but  he  has  professed  it  his  ultimate 
object.  Even  Napoleon  was  fond  of  expounding  at 
St.  Helena  his  life-long  plan  for  perpetual  peace. 
Men  have  only  differed  over  the  means  of  securing 
it.  To  the  conqueror  the  obvious  means  have  always 
seemed  to  be  the  conquest  of  his  enemies  and  the 
supremacy  of  his  will ;  and  sometimes  peace  has  been 
secured  in  this  way.  Alexander  the  Great  nearly 
established  it  for  a  brief  moment  before  his  death, 
and  Rome  succeeded  by  means  of  her  Empire  in 
maintaining  peace,  except  for  border  and  occasional 
civil  wars,  throughout  the  civilized  world  for  centuries. 
That  peace  haunted  the  Middle  Ages,  and  the  Papacy — 
'  the  ghost  of  the  Roman  Empire  sitting  enthroned  on 
the  ruins  thereof — sought  to  maintain  it  by  its 
spiritual  authority.  But  the  decline  of  the  Catholic 
ideal  of  unity  in  the  civilized  world,  and  the  rise  of 
the  independent  national  State  which  brought  the 
Middle  Ages  to  a  close,  banished  perhaps  for  ever 


4  THE  LEAGUE   OF   NATIONS 

that  solution  of  the  problem,  and  presented  it  under 
the  modern  form  of  how  to  create  peace  out  of  the 
conflict  of  national  or  dynastic  ambitions. 

The  national  State  emerged  from  the  Middle  Ages 
under  the  guise  and  guidance  of  personal  monarchy 
and  amid  the  clash  of  religious  wars  which  followed 
upon  the  break -down  of  Catholic  unity  under  the 
Papacy.  But  Wars  of  Religion,  despite  the  proverbial 
bitterness  of  theological  hatred,  proved  more  amenable 
to  pacific  treatment  than  dynastic  or  commercial 
rivalry;  and,  owing  either  to  the  competition  of 
these  other  antagonisms  or  to  the  realization  that 
war  after  all  could  not  solve  theological  problems, 
the  era  of  religious  wars  closed  in  1648  with  the 
Peace  of  Westphalia.  But  the  ink  was  hardly  dry  on 
that  treaty  of  peace  when  two  Protestant  republics, 
England  and  Holland,  flew  at  one  another's  throats 
over  the  carry  ing- trade  of  the  world,  and  the  city 
of  London  responded  to  the  cry  ddenda  est  Carthago 
in  the  interests  of  the  Navigation  Acts.  The  com- 
batants paid  the  price  for  their  strife  in  the  common 
terror  with  which  the  dynastic  ambition  of  Louis  XIV 
soon  inspired  them,  and  that  danger  was  only  laid, 
after  a  generation  of  European  war,  at  the  Treaty  of 
Utrecht  in  1713. 

The  cost  of  these  wars  had  by  now  begun  to  produce 
some  impression  on  the  minds  of  men.  Efforts,  indeed, 
had  long  been  made  to  limit  the  injury  and  the  suf- 
fering they  involved,  and  early  in  the  seventeenth 


IN  HISTORY  5 

century  Grotius  strove  to  systematize  previous  at- 
tempts to  create  an  international  law;  but  the  fact 
that  its  problems  remain  to-day  essentially  what 
they  were  in  the  sixteenth  century  shows  how  little 
progress  has  been  made ;  and  the  mixture  of  litera- 
ture and  ethics  which  we  call  International  Law  still 
lacks  the  sanction  to  give  it  any  real  effect.  Academic 
attempts  to  create  an  international  force  behind  it 
were  occasionally  made  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
In  his  old  age  Sully,  the  great  minister  of  Henri  IV, 
or  perhaps  the  Abbd  who  edited  Sully's  memoirs, 
concocted  a  fiction  according  to  which  Queen  Elizabeth 
proposed  to  Henri  IV  a  'grand  design',  nominally 
to  ensure  the  peace  of  Europe,  but  really  to  control 
the  House  of  Austria;  and  in  1713  the  Abbe  de 
St.  Pierre,  who  was  secretary  to  the  French  pleni- 
potentiary at  the  peace  of  Utrecht,  propounded  a 
further  scheme  for  a  League  of  Princes  with  a  more 
impartial  object.  The  presidency  of  the  League  was 
to  be  held  by  each  great  Prince  in  turn,  the  dif- 
ferences between  the  contracting  parties  were  to  be 
settled  by  arbitration  or  judicial  decision  at  a  congress 
of  plenipotentiaries,  and  the  League  was  to  impose 
by  force  of  arms  the  common  will  upon  recalcitrant 
States. 

Congresses  did  in  fact  become  the  order  of  the  day. 
One  sat,  formally  at  least,  at  Brunswick  for  years 
to  settle  the  affairs  of  Northern  Europe  ;  another  sat, 
or  as  Carlyle  puts  it  'endeavoured  to  get  seated', 


6  THE   LEAGUE   OF  NATIONS 

for  two  years  (1722-4)  at  Cambrai,  and  then  had  '  the 
floor  pulled  from  under  it*  by  a  clandestine  agreement 
between  two  of  the  participants ;  a  third  gathered 
with  no  better  success  at  Soissons  in  1728-9.  '  You 
must',  Cardinal  Fleury  had  said  to  the  Abbd  de 
St.  Pierre,  '  begin  by  sending  a  troop  of  missionaries 
to  prepare  the  hearts  and  minds  of  the  contracting 
sovereigns ' ;  and  there  was  little  prospect  of  a  League 
of  Nations  to  secure  peace  so  long  as  nations  were 
ruled  by  irresponsible  monarchs  and  States  were 
regarded  as  their  personal  property.  For  greed  acts 
with  director  force  upon  an  individual  than  upon  the 
average  member  of  a  community,  and  the  proprietary 
notion  of  the  State  gave  its  owner  a  personal  interest 
in  its  aggrandizement  which  was  fatal  to  all  schemes 
for  preventing  wars  of  aggression. 

The  futility  of  the  early  eighteenth-century  Con- 
gresses was  followed  by  another  series  of  wars,  and  it 
was  not  until  the  anti-monarchical  movement  of 
thought,  stimulated  by  the  American  War  of  Inde- 
pendence, gathered  force,  that  a  more  democratic 
conception  of  the  '  European  Republic ',  as  St.  Pierre 
had  called  it,  became  possible.  Voltaire  and  Rousseau 
in  France,  Bentham  in  England,  and  even  Kant  in 
Germany  advocated  more  popular  forms  of  govern- 
ment than  paternal  despotism  as  essential  to  the 
maintenance  ot  international  peace.  But  the  French 
Revolution,  pacifist  though  it  was,  like  the  Russian 
revolution,  in  its  earlier  stages,  provoked  a  conflict 


IN   HISTORY  7 

with  monarchical  Europe,  and  under  the  stress  of 
War  became  as  militarist  as  its  opponents.  Europe 
was  to  be  forcibly  converted  to  belief  in  the  doc- 
trines of  the  Revolution,  and  the  forcible  conversion 
became  in  the  hands  of  Napoleon  a  military  conquest, 
with  peace  dependent  upon  acquiescence  in  his 
arbitrary  will.  The  problem  of  peace  by  consent 
seemed  as  far  from  solution  as  in  the  days  of  the 
Roman  Empire. 

But  nationality  had,  since  the  Middle  Ages,  acquired 
a  strength  which  even  Napoleon  could  not  destroy. 
No  national  State  has  been  permanently  crushed  by 
force  of  arms,  save  Poland,  since  the  national  State 
was  evolved ;  and  the  moral  of  the  Napoleonic  wars 
is  that  peace  must  depend  for  its  security  and  its 
permanence  not  upon  conquest  but  upon  consent 
between  indestructible  nations.  Europe  took  some 
steps  towards  the  realization  of  this  condition  after 
Napoleon's  fall,  but  the  success  of  its  efforts  was 
impaired  by  discord  over  the  means  by  which  peace 
was  to  be  enforced  and  over  the  articles  of  the 
European  association.  The  Restoration  was  not 
merely  one  of  peace  after  the  Napoleonic  wars  but 
one  of  legitimist  government  after  the  Revolution 

O  O 

and  the  regime  of  Napoleonic  upstarts ;  and  the 
Congress  of  Vienna  in  1814-15  was  distracted  by 
the  two  diverse  aspects  of  the  problem  before  it.  It 
was  a  Congress  of  princes,  not  of  peoples,  and  most 
Sovereigns  were  not  unnaturally  convinced,  after 


8  THE  LEAGUE   OF   NATIONS 

their  recent  experience,  that  war  was  the  outcome  of 
revolution,  and  that  peace  could  be  best  preserved  by 
providing  against  insurrection.  This  line  of  thought 
led  to  the  Holy  Alliance,  which  has  almost  by  common 
consent  been  confused  with  the  Quadruple  Alliance 
of  the  four  great  Powers,  Britain,  Russia,  Prussia, 
and  Austria,  which  overthrew  Napoleon  and  actually 
kept  the  peace  for  some  years  after  his  fall. 

The  Holy  Alliance  was  inspired  by  the  Tsar  Alex- 
ander, a  monarch  with  a  mind  almost  as  nebulous  as 
that  of  his  latest  successor.  He  was  not  without 
liberal  leanings,  he  was  devoted  to  mystical  piety, 
and  even  talked  of  the  sacred  rights  of  humanity. 
But  he  could  not  help  being  an  autocrat  even  though, 
he  regarded  himself  as  merely  a  vicar  of  God,  the 
only  Sovereign  of  the  world.  On  26th  September, 
1815,  he  persuaded  his  Prussian  and  Austrian  col- 
leagues to  sign  with  him  the  Act  of  the  Holy  Alliance, 
in  which  they  spoke  of  their  peoples  as  being  branches 
of  one  Christian  nation,  announced  their  conviction 
that  States  no  less  than  individuals  were  bound  by 
the  precepts  of  Christianity,  promised  to  regulate 
thereby  their  domestic  and  foreign  policy,  and  under- 
took to  render  each  other  assistance  in  every  case  and 
in  every  place.  It  was  to  be  a  universal  union  of 
Christian  fathers  of  national  families,  and  George  IV 
and  the  Pope"  were  the  only  Christian  princes  who 
did  not  subscribe.  But  the  Holy  Alliance  effected 
nothing.  It  held  no  Congressey,  passed  no  executive 


IN   HISTORY  9 

measures,  developed  no  machinery,  and  left  the 
practical  work  of  maintaining  peace  to  the  Quad- 
ruple Alliance. 

This  was  a  businesslike  combination  more  to  the 
taste  of  Castlereagh  and  the  British  Government.  It 
was  formulated  at  Chaumont,  in  March  1814,  by 
Great  Britain,  Russia,  Prussia,  and  Austria,  and  was 
confirmed  with  additions  and  modifications  at  various 
times  until  it  received  its  final  shape  at  the  Second 
Treaty  of  Paris  on  November  20,  1815.  The  four  Great 
Powers  bound  themselves  not  by  a  vague  confession 
of  Legitimist  faith,  but  by  specific  agreements,  and 
arranged  to  meet  at  periodic  congresses  to  transact 
their  business.  At  the  first  of  these  Congresses,  held 
at  Aix-la-Chapelle  in  1818,  France  was  admitted  to 
the  circle  and  the  Quadruple  became  the  Quintuple 
Alliance.  Castlereagh  was  enthusiastic  over  its  pros- 
pects ;  he  hailed  the  system  of  periodic  congresses  as 
f  a  new  discovery '  in  the  art  of  government,  '  at  once 
extinguishing  the  cobwebs  with  which  diplomacy 
obscures  the  horizon,  bringing  the  whole  bearing  of 
the  system  into  its  true  light,  and  giving  to  the 
counsels  of  the  Great  Powers  the  efficiency  and 
almost  the  simplicity  of  a  single  State '. 

But  the  single  State  was  not  so  simple  as  he 
thought.  It  depended  for  its  continuance  upon  a 
common  will,  and  that  common  will  could  only  be 
found  in  a  compromise  between  the  reaction  of  Metter- 
nich  and  the  comparative  liberalism  of  Castlereagh. 


10  THE   LEAGUE   OF   NATIONS 

The  Tsar  held  the  balance,  and  it  was  upset  when 
a  series  of  more  or  less  revolutionary  manifestations 
in  Germany  and  elsewhere,  followed  by  a  mutiny  of 
his  own  Guards  in  18:20,  perverted  Alexander  to  the 
reactionary  cause  and  threw  him  into  the  arms  of 
Metternich.  A  schism  among  the  Great  Powers 
appeared  at  the  Congress  of  Troppau  in  1820  and 
was  widened  at  that  of  Verona  in  1823.  France 
developed  a  disinclination  to  see  reaction  re-established 
in  Italy  by  Austrian  arms,  and  Great  Britain  to  seeing 
it  re-established  in  Spain  (and  still  more  in  the  Spanish 
American  Colonies)  by  French  arms.  On  that  question 
Canning  broke  away  from  the  Quintuple  Alliance  and 
sought  the  support  of  President  Monroe ;  and  a  New 
World  was  called  in  to  redress  the  balance  of  the  Old. 
The  French  Revolution  of  1830  finally  severed  France 
from  the  cause  of  reaction,  and  the  Quintuple  Alliance 
was  thus  reduced  to  a  Triple  Alliance  of  the  three 
autocrats  of  Russia,  Prussia,  and  Austria,  who  had 
signed  the  original  Holy  Alliance.  This  tended  to 
create  and  perpetuate  the  confusion  between  the  two 
Alliances,  and  to  saddle  British  statesmen  like  Castle- 
reagh,  who  made  the  Quadruple  Alliance,  with  the 
odium  of  reaction  attaching  to  the  Holy  Alliance 
which  they  refused  to  join. 

Shorn  of  the  Liberal  elements  in  their  coalition, 
the  three  autocracies  continued  to  repress  reform 
and  thus  to  provoke  revolution  until  the  general 
conflagration  of  1848.  Their  conduct  made  the 


IN   HISTORY  11 

confederation  of  Europe  a  byword,  and  nationalism 
enlisted  under  Canning's  standard  of  '  Every  nation 
for  itself,  and  God  for  tis  all'.  Governments  had  to 
purge  themselves  of  autocracy  before  the  nations 
would  favour  their  combination ;  peoples  might 
combine  themselves,  but  they  had  no  love  for  a 
combination  of  masters. 

It  was,  however,  no  easy  thing  for  democracies 
to  combine.  We  have  seen  that  the  destruction 
of  autocracy  in  Russia  does  not  produce  popular 
unanimity  even  within  a  single  State;  still  less 
has  the  reduction  of  Turkey  in  Europe  conduced  to 
harmony  among  the  Balkan  peoples.  Autocracy 
was  restored  again  in  Austria  after  1848  because 
its  various  races  fought  one  another  instead  of 
combining  against  their  common  master,  and  it 
recovered  in  Germany  because  the  German  tribes 
could  not  unite  on  a  basis  of  Parliamentary  self- 
government. 

Such  efforts  as  were  made  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  to  internationalize  Europe  were 
due  to  sectional  impulse.  There  was  the  attempt  of 
governments  and  diplomatists,  without  much  popular 
backing,  to  create  and  maintain  a  Concert  oi  Europe ; 
there  was  the  middle-class  and  commercial  movement 
towards  Free  Trade ;  and  there  was  the  International 
Socialist  tendency  which  was  directed  not  so  much 
against  war  as  against  capitalism.  The  only  political 
system  which  approached  the  idea  of  a  League  of 


12  THE   LEAGUE   OF   NATIONS 

Nations  was  the  British  Empire,  and  it  achieved 
success,  not  by  the  amalgamation  of  independent 
units,  but  by  their  decentralization ;  a  like  solution 
may  emerge  from  the  turmoil  in  Russia  and  in  the 
Hapsburg  dominions,  and  possibly  Scandinavia, 
through  the  separation  of  Norway  and  Sweden,  may 
have  obtained  a  somewhat  similar  international 
understanding. 

It  is  clear  that  a  League  of  Nations  cannot  be 
based  on  the  German  idea  of  the  State.  The  State, 
according  to  Treitschke,  is  might,  and  has  '  the  right 
to  merge  into  one  the  nationalities  contained  within 
itself.  It  is  not  by  the  repression,  but  only  by  the 
expression,  of  nationality  that  a  League  of  Nations 
can  be  formed ;  for  nationality  has  come  to  stay,  and 
the  purport  of  a  League  of  Nations  is  to  provide 
means  for  the  expression  of  nationality  in  any  form 
but  war.  Youthful  exuberance  tends  to  express 
itself  in  combat,  but  in  maintaining  peace  we  direct 
the  vigour  of  men  into  more  fruitful  channels  than 
mutual  destruction.  The  national  State  is  built  on 
that  foundation;  but  so  far  we  have  failed  in  the 
international  sphere,  and  war  has  perverted  colossal 
energies  from  constructive  to  destructive  purposes. 
The  failure  in  the  nineteenth  century  was  largely 
due  to  a  perversion  of  the  Balance  of  Power.  To 
Castlereagh  and  his  colleagues  that  phrase  meant 
the  'just  repartition  of  force  amongst  the  States  of 
Europe ',  a  sort  of  rationing  of  power  by  agreement ; 


IN   HISTORY  13 

it  has  cornc  to  mean  a  balance  between  two  groups 
of  Allies,  or  in  other  words  between  two  parties 
which,  in  the  absence  of  a  controlling  common  will  or 
super-State,  involves  a  permanent  race  for  armaments 
breaking  out  into  recurrent  civil  war. 

The  Triple  Alliance  was  one  League  of  Nations,  the 
Entente  was  another;  and  the  present  conflict  proves 
their  futility  as  Leagues  of  Peace,  for  if  it  takes  two 
to  make  a  quarrel,  it  takes  two  to  keep  the  peace, 
and  no  League  of  Nations  can  keep  the  peace  if  there 
is  another  bent  on  war.  The  Concert  of  Europe  broke 
down  like  the  Quintuple  Alliance  because  of  the  lack 
of  a  common  will. 

To  the  organization  of  that  common  will  many 
efforts  in  recent  times  have  been  directed.  It  will  not 
come  through  the  conquest  of  others  unless  we  also 
conquer  ourselves.  The  British  Empire  is  an  example 
because  England  conquered  its  will  to  dominate  its 
Dominions;  but  while  an  example,  it  is  not  an 
alternative,  to  the  League  of  Nations,  and  it  would 
cease  to  be  even  an  example  if  it  were  used  to 
dominate  others.  An  even  better  example  is  the 
peace  we  have  had  for  a  century  on  the  frontier  of 
the  United  States  and  Canada  without  any  cost  in 
life,  limb,  or  treasure,  because  the  two  peoples  had 
conquered  their  aggressive  impulse,  and  left  that 
frontier  undefended  except  by  moral  restraint.  Peace 
by  forbearance  can,  however,  only  be  made  between 
those  who  consent  to  forbear,  and  constraint  by  force 


14  THE   LEAGUE   OF   NATIONS 

is  the  only  remedy  for  those  who  cannot  or  will  not 
restrain  themselves. 

The  League  of  Nations,  if  it  is  to  succeed,  must  be 
based  upon  a  common  will  to  maintain  the  peace,  and 
a  common  readiness  to  repress  the  ambitions  of  those 
who  seek  to  break  it.  No  League  has  yet  succeeded 
because  men  have  hitherto  built  their  States  and 
Churches  on  their  difference  from  other  men ;  and  he 
who  would  found  a  League  of  Nations  must  base  it 
on  their  common  interest  in  peace.  Instead  of  a 
balance,  we  need  a  community,  of  power,  with  no 
immunity  for  any  one  from  its  obligations  and 
its  responsibilities. 


THE  LIBRARY 


THE  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS.  By  VISCOUNT 
GREY  or  FALLODOX,  K.G.  3d.  net. 

THE  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS  AND  THE 
COMING  RULE  OF  LAW.  By  Sir  FREDERICK 
POLLOCK.  3d.  net 

THE  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS  AND  THE 
DEMOCRATIC  IDEA.  By  Professor  GILBERT 
MURRAY.  6d.  net 

THE  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS  IN  HISTORY. 
By  Professor  A.  F.  POLLARD.  3d.  net. 

THE  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS  AND  LABOUR. 
By  the  Rt.  Hon.  ARTHUR  HEXDERSOX,  P.C.,  M.P. 
3d.  net. 

THE  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS  AND  FREE- 
DOM  OF  THE  SEAS.  By  Sir  JULIAN  ORBETT. 
3d.  net 

THE  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS  AND  PRIMI- 
TIVE PEOPLES.  By  Sir  SYDNEY  OLIVIER.  3d.  net. 


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